Looking for GM advice.

Looking for GM advice.

Looking for GM advice. How do you play out a crew taking over new turf? I’m having trouble translating in my mind how this would amount to a genuine “score” with interesting stakes and a good back and forth of roleplay. Can you guys give me some examples of how you’ve done it? I’m trying to have my players tell me what they want to do, rather than me telling them what they can do, but it’s proving to not be that simple. I don’t want to end up just doing pure roleplay. We devolved to that in the very first session and it wasn’t very enjoyable. I want to use the rules, but I’m having some difficulty translating some of the abstraction into concrete story events.

5 thoughts on “Looking for GM advice.”

  1. I just ran a New Turf score for my crew of Hawkers last week. They had an earlier opportunity to go after it but passed it up for another score.

    Previously they had heard that the leaders of a nearby Tier 0 gang had been rounded up by the bluecoats and sentenced to Iron Hook. The players were told that the remaining gang members probably couldn’t hold the territory on their own but that other gangs were probably eyeing the territory.

    At the beginning of last session, I brought them up to speed: a new gang had taken over the territory. The new gang was selling inferior product but they also had electroplasm powered batons that gave them an edge.

    My crew decided to take a stealthy approach: observe the new gang and gather intel. Then strike at the right time. They rolled well and they identified the gang’s base of operations and observed a mysterious figure regularly checking in on the gang.

    They also sent a player to buy drugs from a small group on a corner. They got to chat with the dealer and verify the poor quality of the drugs.

    From there, the players changed tactics – some of the players started selling drugs on a nearby corner and lured the locals into an ambush. They did a great job of disabling the thugs and tying them up.

    The crew then marched into the gang’s base with a bag containing all the captured electroplasm batons. They gave the leader (a woman named Frost) a hard offer – work for us, with our better quality drugs, or else. The leader capitulated.

    Soon after they met with the mysterious figure – he was a member of the Unseen who was giving this gang a trial run. The gang grew up together on the streets of Charhollow under the leadership of Frost. The Unseen saw promise in her and helped her secure the new Turf.

    With Frost’s capitulation to the player’s crew, the representative of the Unseen said he was uninterested in Frost but would be in touch with the crew.

  3. It’s not all on you to be the imaginative one.

    When my players want to get new turf, I ask them what they think would be required. They can come up with interesting situations and scenarios just as easily as I can. AND they know what they’re most interested in.

    They wanted a fence, and discussed what they might do to get that “claim” – maybe a rival gang has a fence that they can steal? Maybe it’s a social thing and they just need to make the right contact?

    They decided to stake out the fence, find out how the business works and then probably secretly create problems – then step in and be the heroes that help the fence out

    I rolled on the random “scores” tables to give me inspiration. With their plan, and the random tables, I decided the fence was in trouble because he was selling artifacts to a buyer, and that buyer’s rival wants to cut off the source of artifacts. The fence was about to run for the hills.

    The players decided to step in and help (if the fence left town they wouldn’t get the claim) – they didn’t want to stop the fence selling items either, or they wouldn’t be able to use the fence. So instead, they decided to hold larger auctions and let the clients compete directly – by offering more money. Win-win, right? So the PCs ran around organizing details for the auction (Venue? They have no money so they found a noble that was out of town and used their manor. Invitation list? The fence has a secret list of clients already. Auctioneer? “I used to do people smuggling, I can get one of the slave auctioneers to help us out.” and so on.) – they held the auction, it went well, the score is done.

    … except the messenger delivering the item after the auction never arrived. He’d been murdered along the way. So the PCs (knowing who was responsible, naturally) still had to track down the goods and finish the delivery. They did! Score complete, plus rewards.

    And really, it was two scores. The “missing item” was a new score that followed on from the “run an auction” score, and kind of lets the one give momentum into the other.

    And it all came from some random tables and the players discussing what they wanted to do for the score, or the players improvising “this is how we’ll solve your problem” – nothing was pre-planned, and the majority of the creative work was done with the players, with me only having to say “Great, OK!”

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